Never Go Back: (Jack Reacher 18)

concerned. So it’s cash only, which means motels only, which means we should go back to that hot-sheets place in Burbank, where we met Emily the hooker. All part of the authentic experience.’
    ‘Like driving a car on Mulholland Drive.’
    ‘Or shooting a man on Mulholland Drive. That’s in the movies too.’
    ‘You OK?’
    She said, ‘If I have a problem, you’ll be the first to know.’

    The motel was certainly authentic. It had a wire grille over the reception window, and cash was all it took. The room looked like it should feel cold and damp, but it was in Los Angeles, where nothing was cold and damp. Instead it felt brittle and papery, as if it had been baked too long. But it was functional, and not far from comfortable.
    The car was parked five rooms away. No place else to hide it. But safe enough, even if Shrago saw it. He would watch the room in front of it, and then he would break in, and find the wrong people, and assume the car was one step to the side of where it should have been, but left or right was a fifty-fifty chance, which meant if he called it wrong he would have committed three separate burglaries before he even laid eyes on the target, and suppose the car was two steps from where it should have been? How many rooms was that? His head would explode long before he got to five steps. His tiny ears would ping off into the far distance, like shrapnel.
    Reacher figured he had about four hours to sleep. He was sure Edmonds was busting a gut in Virginia, on East Coast time, gathering information, so she could call early and wake him up.

FIFTY-SEVEN

    EDMONDS’ FIRST CALL came in at two in the morning local time, which was five o’clock Eastern. Reacher and Turner both woke up. Reacher put the open phone between their pillows, and they rolled over forehead to forehead, so they could both hear. Edmonds said, ‘You asked me earlier, about Jason Kenneth Rickard, and a guy called Shrago. Got a pen?’
    Reacher said, ‘No.’
    ‘Then listen carefully. They’re the same as the first two. They’re all deployed with the same company at Fort Bragg. Three teams to a squad, and they’re a team. What that means exactly, I don’t know. Possibly this is skilled work, and they learn to rely on each other.’
    ‘And to keep their mutual secrets,’ Reacher said. ‘Tell me about Shrago.’
    ‘Ezra-none-Shrago, staff sergeant and team leader. Thirty-six years old. Hungarian grandparents. He’s been in the unit since the start of the war. He was in and out of Afghanistan for five years, and since then he’s been based at home, exclusively.’
    ‘What’s up with his ears?’
    ‘He was captured.’
    ‘In North Carolina or Afghanistan?’
    ‘By the Taliban. He was gone three days.’
    ‘Why didn’t they cut his head off?’
    ‘Probably for the same reason we didn’t shoot Emal Zadran. They have politicians too.’
    ‘When was this?’
    ‘Five years ago. They gave him a permanent billet at home after that. And he hasn’t been back to Afghanistan since.’
    Reacher closed the phone, and Turner said, ‘I don’t like that at all. Why would he sell arms to the people who cut his ears off?’
    ‘He doesn’t make the deals. He’s just a cog in a machine. They don’t care what he thinks. They want his muscle, not his opinions.’
    ‘We should offer him immunity. We could turn him on a dime.’
    ‘He beat Moorcroft half to death.’
    ‘I said offer, not give. We could stab him in the back afterwards.’
    ‘So call him, and make the pitch. He’s still on speed dial, in Rickard’s phone.’
    Turner got up and found the right cell, and got back in bed and dialled, but the phone company told her the number she wanted was blocking her calls.
    ‘Efficient,’ she said. ‘They’re cleaning house as they go, minute by minute. No more Mr Rickard. Or Baldacci, or Lozano. All consigned to history.’
    ‘We’ll manage without Shrago’s input,’ Reacher said. ‘We’ll figure it out. Maybe in a dream, about five minutes from now.’
    She smiled, and said, ‘OK, goodnight again.’

    Juliet called Romeo, because some responsibilities were his, and he said, ‘Shrago has located their car. It’s at a motel south of the Burbank airport.’
    Romeo said, ‘But?’
    ‘Shrago feels it’s likely not in front of the right room, as a basic security measure. He’d have to check ten or a dozen, and he feels he won’t get away with that. One or two, maybe, but no more. And there’s no point in